KANSAS CITY, Mo. – There's a decent chance that Sporting Kansas City will revert to their default high-pressing 4-3-3 when the Colorado Rapids visit Sporting Park on Saturday (8:30 pm ET, MLS LIVE). Then again, manager Peter Vermes has already shown this year that his preseason talk of looking at other formations and approaches wasn't just idle speculation.
Sporting are coming off what Vermes called their best tactical game of the year, last week's 1-1 draw at D.C. United, heading into Saturday's matchup with the Western Conference's cellar dwellers – and in that game, they didn't play like their old selves for much of the match.
Vermes left center forward Dom Dwyer alone up top through 70 minutes before bringing on Krisztian Nemeth – usually the starting right winger – to replace him, and Kansas City spent the bulk of the second half sitting back and daring United to try to break them down.
“We played totally different in D.C. than we play 75 percent of the time,” center back and captain Matt Besler told MLSsoccer.com on Thursday. “It wasn't anything because of us. It was the coaching staff seeing an opportunity that we thought we could take an advantage of.”
D.C. controlled the possession, 55.5 percent to 45.5 percent, but couldn't translate that into a match-winner as Sporting came away with a key away point against the East leaders.
“We gave them a chance to try to build the game a little bit, and I think they found that really difficult,” Vermes told reporters in a conference call after the match. “I thought our team did a really good job. They really didn't break us down through the buildup. They got very frustrated and just banged balls forward, which those balls are more ours than theirs, especially when their forward had his back to the goal and we were able to see the field in front of us.”
Even so, Vermes said on Thursday during the club's weekly news conference, Sporting held onto elements of their high press.
“When we were high up the field and we lost the ball, we didn't drop back right away,” Vermes said. “We tried to win it back right away. So it just depends on the situation. They were at home, and they needed to try to drive the game, and they needed to try to break us down. We didn't need to break ourselves down.
“So it's a version of us – but for sure, it's a part of the evolution. You're always trying to increase the soccer IQ of your team.”
That evolution began in the opening match, a 1-1 home draw against the New York Red Bulls, when Vermes put playmaker Benny Feilhaber in the middle of a five-man midfield and assigned him a more defensive role. It continued as Feilhaber shifted forward into the attack, where he now leads the club with five assists.
And as Sporting near the one-third mark of their season, Vermes likes what he's seeing from a club that is filled with newcomers in key positions, has already lost center back Ike Opara to injury for a second straight year and is still waiting for right back Chance Myers to play again for the first time since May 2014.
“The good thing is that, from game to game to game, it's been a very good progression,” Vermes said. “It's not just the team. It's also individual players. So it's coming along, but we still have a lot of work to do.”
Vermes said Nemeth, a natural center forward who has had to adjust to life on the wing and shares the scoring lead with Dwyer at three goals apiece, is one of those who have bought in quickly. Another, he said, is Haitian defensive midfielder Soni Mustivar, who arrived after the preseason but has worked his way into starting Sporting's last two matches.
“We already knew that he was a guy that had a very high work rate in the team he played before,” Vermes said. “It was interesting to see how fast he was able to acclimate to that and cover a lot of ground in that position.
“Nemeth, it was challenging for him in the beginning, playing in from the wing position. But he's really gotten used to that, and he's brought a little bit of his own swagger to that position, his own qualities that make him dangerous at that position.”
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And if Sporting revert to their usual home approach on Saturday against the Rapids, Nemeth and Dwyer should get chances to play off each other's strengths – Dwyer's strength and work rate and Nemeth's creativity and pitch awareness – to make things hard on Colorado's backline.
“I think at home, we play our best when we high press the other team,” Besler said. “We make them uncomfortable, and that causes them to make turnovers in their part of the field, and we're able to break fast.”
That fits in more with Sporting's stated desire to dictate the flow of a game, rather than reacting to what opponents do – but flexibility is also a mark of a mature team, veteran left back Seth Sinovic said later during Thursday's news conference, even a team that still holds to its core values of forcing turnovers and creating opportunities as far up the pitch as possible.
“We change our line of confrontation,” he said. “We adjust from game to game, how we want to come out in the game, and maybe that changes at halftime. But I think players are learning to adapt a little better to the style within the style.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
